Book rec? Looking for story of 18 handicap who gets to 9

Practice
#21

You might contact the GHIN folks who have the data on 2.3M golfers for this information… Or maybe ask the folks at ARCCOS golf as they have been tracking data for a while, not sure for how long.

Several years ago, I wrote to the group that handles Shotlink and asked about some putting stats… and they were kind enough to share the data… which previously had never been published. My point, is sometimes asking can get you what you want.

Now as to your specific question… how many years in a row would a person have to have an 18 HCP for you to be satisfied? Then over how long a period could they take to become a 5? One year, two years, … I am asking since the details would have to be very specific to query the database.

Hope you find out and can share it.

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#22

This is a good question and one worth thinking about… from my experience at a local country club, the majority of golfers don’t spend much time working to actually improve. I know plenty of guys who take lessons and say they want to get better, but I don’t know many who set out an actual goal to improve and then build the processes (and analyze their flaws).

I’d be curious to see not only your data (people improving over one season) but also what happens the following season… my bet is most regress to their old handicaps.

Would be an interesting data analysis project… might have to see if I can find a data set to play with.

#23

  1. Wow, I like how action-oriented you are Juan! I may be too lazy or too busy to just jump in on my own and start requesting data.

  2. My way of passing the buck:

If anyone at USGA or Arccos reads this, consider: Lots of reporters/bloggers/amateurs play around with all the PGA data that gets released. Imagine if you did the same with GHIN or Arccos data, made it easily available for nerds to play with. I would play with data if easily available, as I’m sure many others would.

  1. Juan: to your question…

What are we trying to learn? “How often does meaningful improvement happen among golfers, once somebody hits steady state?” Is that 1% of the time, 10% of the time?

I don’t have strong feelings about whether steady state means 3, 5, or 7 years.

Or whether it’s better defined by Rounds Played - steady state means 50 rounds of same handicap, 100 rounds, 200 rounds.

And does meaningful mean the handicap changes by 5, by 3, by 10? Again, no strong feelings.

  1. Can someone check my math here:

If the 25th percentile GHIN is 18, and the 50th percentile GHIN is 13, then to gain 5 strokes would be 25/34, or 0.74 standard deviations. That would be huge!

#24

Exactly, Craigers. What we really care about is something like “What are typical gains for adult steady state golfer if he devotes 3-24 months, 1-4 lessons/month, 2 to 5 hours/week of practice, to improvement?”

That data set would sort of lie with Arccos, which could capture not just the calendar data, but the actual “number of swings” data.

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#25

I’ll talk to my club pro and see if he can get me our clubs data (if they have access / keep it)… he got me some interesting data points for one year on the Saturday rounds for every hole on the course…

#26

This is incredible. Thank you so much for sharing. An incredibly daunting practice routine. I love having a playbook like this.

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